This episode really defied my expectations. With the clichés in the previous episode, I was expecting a rather cheesy aftermath, like so many of the other shorter arcs of this series screwed up before. And yet this episode was surprisingly good.

And this mostly comes courtesy of Tessa, who turned out to be a really genuine character throughout this episode. She’s so incredibly innocent and yet none of it is overdone or shallow like with the Randolf or Mildred episodes. I especially liked how she desperately tried to make up with Anne, knowing the things she did.

The point at which the headmistress called the entire class together also really hit home with me. The nostalgia! When I was a kid, we also had these points at which someone did something, yet refused to come clean, and so the teacher put the entire class on these long-winded lectures that at the time never seemed to end.

This actually provides hope for the rest of this series. Tessa now has enough depth and there’s no reason for the creators to develop her even more. The big question that’s going to make or break the finale of this series is of course going to be the rest of Anne’s classmates, with most importantly the bookworm and the tomboy. The rest of the series will be fine. It’s those two that the creators really need to pay attention at in order to prevent falling into past pitfalls. If they can get that duo right, then there’s not much else that can go wrong at this point.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Ah, thankfully this episode did a great job in portraying the orphanage that Anne ended up in. The owner was very down to earth, and the other orphans weren’t just evil for the sake of evil, but just a bunch of bratty kids, put off by how Anne made a complete enemy out of the entire orphanage as she refused to socialize. The fire was a bit too much,, but at least this explains what happened to Browning’s book.

But yeah, the Anne right now is more and more growing to become the Anne at the start of Anne of Green Gables. I honestly didn’t expect the creators to be able to pull this off. The reason she hated to be called a red head wasn’t because she was occasionally teased about it when she was young. Instead, it was because of the abuse she endured in the orphanage. In her own mind, orphanages had formed such an evil presence that she simply refused to believe that they’re not all that bad.

Her classmates and teacher also sound much more interesting than her class in Marysville. The teacher is a bit incompetent, but you can see that the children respect her. She’s not so obviously and stereotypical as Henderson was. Her classmates are also much more complex than Mildred (who was just bratty because her parents didn’t pay enough attention to her) and Randolf. These kids all had the painful experience of the loss of their parents, and yet they haven’t shut themselves in as much as Anne. Even the bookworm turned out to be the most popular girl, but in a more realistic way than you often see portrayed.

Now, the question obviously remains: is the development of these people going to go right? The next episodes are going to be a huge hit or miss again, because it’s exactly this that this series is worst at. Remember the midwife of a few episodes ago: when she first appeared, she was awesome. Then she got developed, and she turned cheesy. The kids right now are great, but half-hearted development is going to hurt them much more than making them stay the same. Right now, there are seven episodes left. What this series needs to do is make use of this time. Instead of picking out one character every episode to develop, it instead needs to focus on slice of life, and let the characters gradually come to tolerate each other.

I know that the creators can do this for Anne: they have shown this by now. Anne right now is still very elitist: she’s been so much used to look down on other kids that she needs to realize that she’s just the same as everyone else in order to remain in canon with Anne of Green Gables. I have no doubt that the creators can do this, and they need to realize that they can simply do the same thing for the other character. No need for cheese.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

The episodes in this series have really ranged from incredibly bad to incredibly good. This episode was another gem for this anime. A unique episode that really closes off Anne’s development.

Ah, screw Mr Hammond’s death. This guy was too one-dimensional to really have an impact. What counts is what happens after his demise, because Johanna’s problems were nothing compared to Mrs. Hammond. This time, not four but eight children had to be divided, and none of the family members was wealthy enough to support more than two children. And thus comes the cruel ritual in which they each pick a child they like and split up the family.

But the real star of this episode was Anne. Oh my god, the creators may have their issues with cheese, but their portrayal of Anne in this episode was magnificent. The way she was animated, standing at the sidelines while nobody cared about what was going to happen to her. This was the moment Anne was supposed to break, and oh my god, they portrayed that so well.

With this, everything makes sense. Those who followed my entries will often have noticed how often I criticized that Anne had no reason to throw away her past: she was living happily, she was very eager to study and had a lot of friends, and no matter what was thrown at her, she kept looking at the bright side of life.

It’s heart-wrenching to see that this, of all things, was too much for her. All this time, she was able to look on the bright side of life because she had a family. She had to work hard and often only had the people in her imagination to talk to, but I think that she drew satisfaction in that she was needed. Since she’s an orphan, she probably heard some terrible things about orphanages, and in her imagination this only got blown up into terrible proportions. It was only fueled by how Mr. Hammond saved her from being sent to one: before she became friends with him, I believe that that was what kept her supporting the always cold Mrs. Hammond. Sure, she’s probably going to find out that orphanages aren’t as bad as she imagined them to be, but nevertheless: this episode inflicted a nasty wound on her that caused her to block out most of her youth.

I really thought that we’d only get to see this story at episode 38 or something. There’s going to be a significant amount of episodes dedicated to that orphanage, apparently. Again, I can’t say whether or not they’re going to be good or not. With this series at this point, anything can happen. With this episode, we closed off the theme that this series was best at: dysfunctional families. Right now, Anne is going to meet children who are the same as her, yet can the writers handle them? The potential of them delving into their cheesy episodic stories is of course really big…
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Every week I keep hoping for Anne NOT to go to school, and this episode listened to my prayers: it was an entire episode, dedicated to the Hammond family, and holy crap! Spoiler alert!

Hammond was bound to die, we all knew that. However, I didn’t think that the creators were going to be this fast with it! We’ve got eight episodes left. I really thought that the entire second half of this series would be spent on the Hammond family, in contrast with the Thomas Family, and that Hammond’s death, and Anne’s subsequent leaving of that family as the major climax. This episode gives my entire expectations for the rest of this series a whole new dimension.

Hammond’s death didn’t have the same impact as the Bert’s, but that’s only logical. He’s only had the screen-time of about four episodes, and really didn’t have the time to truly make an impact. And not to mention that his death was a bit cheesy. Did the creators really have to pull down these angelic lights for it? Nevertheless, this was a great episode that really gave a lot of depth for the Hammond family for as far as possible. We see how the couple fell in love, and how Mr. Hammond just kept working himself to death, in order to support his family.

The death scene also showed a fundamental difference with the Thomas family. One thing I really liked about that scene was the random passer-by: he immediately tried to do everything he could to try and save Mr. Hammond. That’s not something you see often in anime, is it? It really showed that Mr. Hammond is well liked in his town, completely the opposite of Bert, who people refused to help even when Noah was in trouble. You could call Mr. Hammond naive, but at the same time he strikes me as someone who didn’t want to give in to his illness: with his heart, he knew that he wouldn’t see his children grow up, and therefore did everything he could to ensure them a future as good as possible: he kept taking on large jobs to give his wife financial support, he searched for Anne to support his wife for after he dies. And in the meantime, he simply tries to forget about his problems by being nice, fantasizing like Anne and generally looking at the bright side of life.

But yeah, the problem is going to be: what will the rest of this series focus at? Anne is going to have to leave eventually, but how long will that take? We know that she and Mrs. Hammond don’t go well together, and I think that Mrs. Hammond will use that reason to send Anne to the orphanage. Still, I do think that the two of them are going to spend a few more episodes together.

I also really wonder what this series is going to do for its climax, and what this series is going to look like once Anne does arrive at the orphanage (which at the same time seems so close now). At this point, episodes in this series can either be really good or really dull, with nothing in between: at this point I’ve really lost my patience with this show’s cheesy episodic stories like what we saw in the previous two episodes. However, at the same time the themes of dysfunctional families have been fleshed out really well now, with the Hammond family to contrast with the Thomas family.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Well, I actually forgot to publish this post after I wrote it. That’s a headdesk-moment right there.

Obviously I’m not in the mood of writing everything all over again, but I do want to say that this episode confirmed my fears of the return of the cheese in this series. It wasn’t as bad as during the Marysville arc, but nevertheless the climaxes are getting formulaic at this point. This will probably continue for most of the rest of this series.

However, there is good news, because this series promises to end on a good note. This really is a series with its ups and downs, and we’re unfortunately currently in a down again.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

So, this was really the episode that would make or break this series: it was going to be the first episode of Anne, as she settled in the Hammond family, and visited her new school for the first time. The result is really a mixed bag, but I think that the creators are going to be able to make something out of it. At least, I don’t think that we’re going to get another repeat of the disaster of the Marysville arc.

First of all, Anne has grown again: she’s now ten years old, and you can see her development for the past three months that skipped: she has had no time to play around and be a kid, and really grown up in the meantime. But yeah, that brings us the the problems of continuity again: 10-year-old Anne is much more mature than 11-year-old Anne of Green Gables.

At a certain point in this episode, Anne also finds books of Shakespeare, and it’s actually very interesting to see her using these books and her own fantasy, in order to distract her from the reality she’s in. Like with the books she read in Marysville, she becomes entranced with them, especially because this time, she really has nobody to talk to. In Marysville, she at least had Johanna to talk to, Bert to relieve her worries to, and Noah, who she saw as her own brother because she had been raising him ever since he was born. But yeah, that brings us to continuity again: remember the beginning of Anne of Green Gables? Anne talked about a lot of girly things, but to my memory, she NEVER mentioned Shakespeare. This just again shows that there were a lot of red-haired Anne Shirleys walking around back in those days.

Now, as for the school. I absolutely loved the part in which the teacher was grading some tests by his students. That was really realistic. We didn’t actually get to see the students, because the schools were closed for summer break, but at least the teacher is much better than Henderson: he has this down-to-earth attitude towards teaching, and yet you can see why he decided to become a teacher in the first place.

Unfortunately on the other hand, the cheese is back. The drama in this episode was of the shallow kind again: Anne meets person, Anne talks to person and in the end the person completely changes into a different character because of the insights that Anne gave him. Especially the way in which the teacher said exactly what he learned and how it’s going to change his life just felt forced. I know that this is a kids’ show and all, but Porfy no Nagai Tabi faced the same problem, and that series again and again came up with great one-episode stories with plenty of well-written drama.

So yeah, overall this episode pretty much solidified as an inferior, though capable WMT-series, somewhat like Ie Naki Ko Remi (the 1997-version)’s sister-series. The two have a lot in common: both are spin-offs of utterly brilliant adaptations of literary works, but have drama that’s too shallow to really call themselves equal to the series they’re based on. And yet standalone, they’re pretty enjoyable. Remi had this with its excellent soundtrack (along with the best OP and ED of any WMT I’ve seen so far), strong lead and dark story about child-labour, while Anne did this with its dark attention to dysfunctional families, and a well-developed lead character Anne, who hardly resembles her original character.

Now that 2010 is getting closer and closer, I can only hope for an announcement of next year’s WMT-series to appear. Oh, I so hope that Nippon Animation is going to continue this franchise, despite its low popularity.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Another dark and haunting episode for this series. At this point, I’m really doubting how to exactly rate this series in the end: the Marysville arc was very annoying to sit through and contained lots and lots of stereotypes, and yet the Thomas Family was very well developed, and the Hammond-family also is promising to be a very engaging family for Anne to get caught up in. This series is definitely the worst of the new generation of WMTs, but how much worse than Porfy is it?

But yeah, the original Akage no Anne already hinted at it: raising large families is hard, and the Hammond family at this point just shows how hard this is when you have a dysfunctional family. The father seems like he has the financial resources to take care of his kids, but he has heart problems that prevent him from helping his wife when he returns home. His wife right now was in the middle of her pregnancy, so there was nobody who could keep the children in check this episode. It’s a very real problem that I’m sure a lot of families had back in the days in which this series took place.

This episode also introduces a new character, Miss Hagaty, who is the local medical specialist and helps the mother through her birth in this episode (I’ve got to look up their names some day), and she really strikes me as a very strong character with a lot of experience in these matters.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

I really like the World Masterpiece Theatre, but damn. There are times when it can be so goddamned cruel to its characters. It’s episodes like this that are heart-wrenching, simply because of what the characters have to go through. This was such a powerful episode, but oh my god… it was hard to watch Anne with the situation she’s been thrust in.

So Bert is dead. He left a considerable debt behind due to his drinking problem. Johanna’s parents are willing to pay this debt, take care of her and her four children. Only Anne is left out of the picture and has to be put into an freaking orphanage. Okay, so there turns out to be a guy who’s willing to take Anne in. Johanna is then forced to give Anne over to a TOTAL STRANGER, who’s going to take care of her, provided that she takes care of his children. These children turn out to be two pairs of twins, two older sisters, and another baby that’s about to be born. Suddenly Anne’s life with the Thomas Family is starting to look like a goddamned walk in the park. I knew that this was going to happen because of Anne of Green Gables, but damn. Seeing it actually animated only shows how many tasks are put to such a young girl… The only bright side at this point is that the father looks like a nice guy compared to what a bastard Bert was, however that brings us to another problem: this guy is also going to die, isn’t he?

On top of that, this episode definitively said goodbye to the Thomas family as well. In this episode, finally another reference to Elisa appeared. Seriously, I had totally forgotten about her, but she was the one who gave Anne a happy early childhood (see me talking about this for a character who only is 9 years old? How many others of Anne’s age have received this much depth already?)

Something tells me that the new family is going to be fine. It’s going to be exactly what this series is good at, only much worse than the Thomas Family (who finally grew up, dammit!). I guess that it’s here that Anne goes to school, and with that I have absolutely no idea whether that’s going to turn out all-right or not. It should prove to be great slice of life, provided that the creators can get the characters for Anne’s classmates right, instead of making them into a bunch of stereotypes. And hey, the creators can’t create a worse teacher than Henderson at this point, can they?
Rating: ** (Very hard to watch, but Excellent nonetheless)

This episode was just… amazing. As cheesy as the drama was around Mildred, Randolf and Henderson, this episode was the exact opposite: powerful and subtle, and a very fitting end to one of my favourite characters of this series. I’m really happy with this series: there really were times when my patience had completely ran out because of said cheesy drama, but the past two episodes have actually made up for that. I’ve seldom seen series that start off great, then turn out disappointing, and yet manage to pick up themselves back to their previous level eventually.

the star of this episode was to my surprise Horace. While he was the oldest of the family, he was able to still remain a little kid because Anne was there to take care of his siblings. With this however, it really occurred to him that he is the oldest man in the family. His character-development from such a bratty little boy to an older brother who desperately wants to be dependable really was one of the best parts of this episode.

And yet for Johanna, it’s the complete opposite. It’s ironic: I kept wondering why Anne would be forced out of the house, because the series has shown that she’s able to support her family, if only barely, with the help of Anne. However, this episode fully explained that: she may have hated her husband at times, but she still really cared about this good for nothing drunk. His death completely sapped the life out of her, and who knows how long she might take to recover from it?

So yeah, the next episode yet again promises to be something amazing: thankfully Johanna’s parents have agreed to take her in, and take care of her children. Anne however, doesn’t fit in there, and so she’s going to have to find a new family. The next episode is going to be a major episode for Anne, and I’m really curious to see what the creators can do with her at this point.

Aside from the next episode, I have absolutely no idea what the final third of this series is going to be like. Is it going to be good? Bad? This series has proven to be so brilliant at some times, and yet so painfully annoying at others. It can really go anywhere, especially since I suspect that the final third is going to focus on a whole new cast, and we’re soon going to say goodbye to the Thomas family.

In a way, I like this: I really like series in which you won’t know what to expect. There really have been few series that have had such a large contrast between their highs and lows. It’d be awesome if this series could keep this up, but even if it doesn’t, it doesn’t change that this episode was an amazing one.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Oh my god… it’s happened. It’s bloody happened. What an incredible episode this was, it totally changed the way I look at this series. I know that I’ve talked down to this series a lot for the past months, but damn. This episode really reminded me why I’ve become such a huge fan of the World Masterpiece Theatre… BIG SPOILERS coming up!

But yeah, that disclaimer must have been a bit redundant, because it’s an event that probably everyone knew about before this series started: the death of Bert. And that’s one thing that makes the World Masterpiece Theatre stand apart from all those other series: you know bad things are going to happen; you know that the shit is going to hit the fan, but you just never know when exactly it’s going to happen. Especially Les Miserables loved pulling this.

But seriously, the end of this episode took me utterly by surprise. The build-up for this episode was just SO adorable. Because of all the things with Henderson, I was really starting to forget what makes the World Masterpiece Theatre stand above 90% of all other anime: the character-development. And of course: that’s going to take about 25 episodes to really pay off in your average series. This episode really was where everything came together in terms of development in a really adorable Christmas episode. From Bert finally selling his trophy, to the villagers forgiving him because of how he risked his life to save Noah in the previous episode. It all fit incredibly well.

It’s really a shame that this series was wrongly advertised as Anne of Green Gables’ prequel, because that would suggest that Anne is the only important character here, while in fact this series is just as much about Bert, Johanna and the rest of the Thomas family.

I really wonder how this series is going to play out now that Bert is about to die. Not in terms of where the plot is going, but whether Anne’s second family is going to be able to match up to the Thomas family, or whether they’re going to be more like the stereotypical Henderson, Randolf and Mildred. I really have no bloody clue, but the past few episodes have really made up for how this series just kept going on about Henderson in the Marysville School Arc.
Rating: *** (Awesome)